


Fall For Me

by Duganator01



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Jaune-centric, Post-Volume 6 (RWBY), Sorry Jaune, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:26:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23080924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duganator01/pseuds/Duganator01
Summary: Has Jaune ever really talked about what happened the night of the Fall? Well maybe not, but he's decided the universe thinks it's time for a fall of his own.Now if he could try not to lose everything this time, that would be fantastic.(I dunno, this just sort of came to me. There's a dragon for reasons. And those reasons are that dragons are cool.)
Relationships: Jaune Arc & Nora Valkyrie, Jaune Arc & Pyrrha Nikos & Lie Ren & Nora Valkyrie, Jaune Arc/Pyrrha Nikos, Lie Ren/Nora Valkyrie
Comments: 9
Kudos: 26





	1. The Jump

**Author's Note:**

> He remembered Falling. He remembered the light. And then darkness. Not this light, not this darkness, but the difference was suddenly so very, very small…

_ Don’t worry about it _ .

The grappled shivered and whined under Jaune’s fingertips as he steadied his extended arm again, blinking sweat out of his eyes. He felt the far end of the line  _ snap _ into place near the top of his second pillar and tugged at it carefully. It seemed solid enough, although the occasionally dubious reliability of Atlas’s hastier designs was another thing not to think about. 

But these seemed to work, so that was a relief at least.

He glanced over to where Oscar was standing guard, legs apart and staff in hand, glaring out across the plain with a look of freckled determination. So far, there hadn’t been man Grimm heading their way. Yet. 

They had both seen the change in the movements of the dark figures when the first pillars had blown, as the howls of unearthly fury increased in response, but most of the activity seemed to be further away, back towards the mountainous end of the plain.

Exactly what was going on over  _ there _ was… well, it was yet another thing not to think about. Jaune shook his head, as if that would push aside the shards of broken thought that snapped and stabbed across his mind, or the way his heartbeat was keeping a dread rhythm in his chest.

“You doing alright, buddy?” Oscar glanced back and the  _ concern _ in his eyes felt like a punch. Jaune nodded, turning away so the boy wouldn’t see his expression. This meant he was staring down over the edge of the cliff, and he had to bite down on a fresh surge of nausea.

The canyon here was wider than below their first pillar and more uneven, as if something had torn its way up through the sheets of blackish stone from underneath, leaving a gaping wound in the rock surface, with the pillar hanging in its center like a last failed suture. 

Broken ledges and splintered layers stuck out from the walls, giving the plunge into oblivion a twin pair of ragged edges. Jaune looked back up quickly, fixing his wavering attention back to the spinning brilliance above.

Right. No chickening out now.

He hit the grapple mechanism again, bracing himself for the lurch that came as the gears bit down, and it yanked him forward and upwards, shooting across the inverted sky like a very guided sort of comet. He brought his legs up, getting ready to cushion his impact against the vertical obsidian ahead.

The second roar hit when he was halfway across. This was a  _ new _ sound. It still boiled with the terrible fury of before, the wounded malevolence that had poured out of every sliver of this world in a poisoned sonic tide. But this one had a new edge to it, something altogether much worse. It held  _ triumph. _

Jaune twitched, a violent shiver that wrenched him hard against his airborne pose, and rammed his gloved fingertips back into the unfortunately sensitive grapple control. Gears screeched, choking out an acrid metallic smoke as the little machine clamped to an abrupt halt, sending him jerking to and fro with aborted momentum.

As he tried to steady the swaying, as the horrible sound twisted fresh coils of whispering darkness into his mind, he turned, and he saw the dragon coming back.

_ Don’t worry- _

The sound bore down like a tidal surge, spilling out ahead of the oncoming nightmare, and Jaune froze. He had to move, had to  _ move _ , as the huge shape dove towards him, its wings scything out like their own horizon. But all he could do was clamp down, tightening his fingers around the grapple line until his gloves creaked.

Breath curdled in his throat, then broke apart in wordless yelp of disbelief as the dragon suddenly swung upwards, letting out a fresh howl. And this time there was something like pain in the sound.

Jaune saw the smaller form, highlighted against the vicious violet sparks that sprang from the creature’s skin as Ruby shot across its back and down along the jagged spine. The reaper twisted this way and that as the titanic shape rolled beneath her, dragging the flame bright blade of Crescent Rose between the scales. 

Dark clouds boiled up into the air as the dragon swiveled, snapping back at the assaulting figure, and the spinning battle was so close that Jaune could see each movement with horrible clarity.

Then the crystal above him erupted in howling brilliance, and Jaune couldn’t hold back a scream. He ducked down between his own arms as the spiraling beam thundered out overhead. 

Close, so close, why was he so  _ close _ ?! Oh gods above.

It lit up a new corona of purple fractals that snaked across the dragon’s chest, following the marks of Ruby’s frantic slices, and the oil-slick flesh drew closed beneath the too-bright beam.

Spillover magic sent freezing, electric prickles scattering across Jaune’s exposed skin, clawing at him with a much less benign effect than it had for the roaring monster overhead. He gritted his teeth, trying to focus on the pain there, the  _ real  _ pain. But memory was swarming around him.

It surrounded him like blackened flies, and the  _ now _ of it was so hard to find. The endless, hungry fall of that red-black oil beneath him seemed to drag down against him, pulling at the tiny grapple that shook and shivered on his arm. It would be so easy to fall, so  _ easy _ , with the screaming incandescence blazing out overhead and oblivion reaching up to claim him back.

He remembered the light. And then darkness. Not  _ this _ light, not  _ this  _ darkness, but the difference was suddenly so very, very small…

And then the bright beam winked out, the dragon swept past above him, and the bottom dropped out of Jaune’s tentatively hanging world as the creature’s barbed tail sliced through his line like it was little more than string. He held on tight, more through terrified instinct than any actual plan.

As the alien gravity tightened its fingers in his stomach, there were several long  _ horrible _ moments of swinging weightlessness. Then he slammed into the side of the pillar with like a pendulum on a clock and he tried desperately not to throw up. Motion sickness was terrible at the best of times, and this wasn’t even close to the best of anything.

He was running out of time. The thought spun in his mind, whirling up every other attempt at coherence into its ever tightening embrace. The knight tried to feel the grapple under his shaking fingers and untangle the fragment of him that was still in the present.

Focus.  _ Focus. _

Painfully slowly, Jaune managed to raise his head up and force his eyes open, squinting up into the ominous brilliance above him. He was barely a few feet below the top of the pillar, which did make sense, when he could push aside panic long enough to think about it. 

The grapple was making a strange whining noise against his arm, and the line was quivering in a way it hadn’t done before. But his grip was reasonable enough and he began to haul himself upwards.

One hand after another. If he didn’t allow anything else to exist, if he filled the whole of every second side to side with the inching repetition of climbing-

- _ if I lose everything- _

-Then it wasn’t so bad. One step at a time. A they’d always done, when everything had seemed at its worst. Just one step at a time.

His fingers grazed the clear space on top of the pillar, just as the grapple mechanism gave a high pitched scraping sound, accompanied by the send of burning metal, and he felt the grip of it start to give. Jaune lunged, pinning the line tight between his feet as he thrust himself upwards.

Jaune managed to get a hand clamped fully into place on the lip of the pillar before the metal teeth of the device failed entirely, falling slack against him and blood screamed in his ears. He was suddenly, silently,  _ immensely _ thankful for the augmented attributes his Semblance would provide in moments of crisis. 

It strengthened his hold as his extended arm shook madly, almost in time to the slam of his heartbeat. One hand’s grip away from falling.

Breath, Jaune. Oh boy...

His entire world seemed to have narrowed down to the pressure on his left wrist, and it took a remarkable effort to figure out where his other arm was. Hanging loose at his side, with the limp thread of the wire still gripped in his shaking fingers. And it took even longer to remember how to move it.

Come on man. Up you get.

He’d done worse than this. Much worse than this. Maybe not over the infernal bloody goop of the Grimmlands, but over enough icy cold water that it might as well count. Clutching Nora’s equally battered form against him, stumbling as they kept each other upright and the ground had buckled and cracked underneath them.

Or leaping from one precarious footing to another in the crumbling ruins of Beacon Initiation. With his heart in his mouth, and the dreadful  _ depth _ beneath yawning its invitation.

Or clinging to fraying rope in a cursed storm, hauling his own half frozen body up the degrading rigging as Weiss shouted frantic instructions at him. Her words whipped away in an instant by the hungry winds, never to reach his ears.

In comparison, hanging by one hand from a glassy pillar, over an endless drop into literally evil primordial soup was… Well, certainly not  _ better _ , but at least on some kind of horrible par. Jaune gritted his teeth and swung up, grasping desperately at air until he managed to get another point of purchase on the polished stone.

His shoulders were screaming beneath his armor but, accompanied by his own muttered litany of curses, he eventually managed to pull himself up. He lay flat for a moment, precarious still on the edge, as the slice and shimmer of the spinning crystals whirled by a few feet from his head.

Okay. Okay.

The bomb was gone. His fingers scraped at the empty space at his belt, but the awkward wedging of the explosive device hadn’t survived the last flailing moments. After a few false starts, he managed to pull himself upright.

Body shivering with tension as he tried to keep his footing against the slick stone surface beneath, he looked up through the glowing haze, very pointedly not looking down into the vertigo inducing drop just behind him. Even in the strange over magnification of this place, it was difficult to make out exactly what was happening in the battle overhead anymore. 

But the bright slices of impact came again and again, behind the shadows of twisting wings.

Ruby was fighting it. Jaune reached up, jamming his fingers into his scalp and tugged at his hair until the roots stung. Memories skipped and broke open around him. Suddenly so close, so real, and he tried not to be sick again. What kind of plan was this? Ruby was  _ fighting _ it now, and the sword at Jaune’s side seemed to be pulling against him, echoing a strange hollow itch down into his fingers.

The bomb was gone. He’d failed. They were out of time, and it was his fault. Again.

If he had only been faster. If he hadn’t spent so freaking long  _ worrying _ . Always worrying, and what was the point of that, the point of  _ him _ ? He was always just too slow, and people always  _ died _ .

_ “I’m sorry-!” _

An old cry, cut off abruptly by his own whimper as the crystals flared again, hurling another dazzling spiral beam up towards the battling shapes, and nearly taking his balance entirely. He could feel his Aura straining as he had to lean into the wind of it, angry magic spillover biting into his skin, scattering his breaking thoughts.

What now, little knight? What do you have left?

The sword was so heavy at his side. He was only dimly aware of himself reaching round, of his fingers tightening into their long-habitual grip, as the world began to fade away around him. Leaving nothing but that screaming, searing pillar of twisted brilliance, inches from his face. His cheeks were wet, but right now he couldn’t remember why.

I’m sorry, guys. This was the best I could do.

Jaune swung his sword.

And there was light.


	2. The Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heroic sacrifice looks good on paper. In practice, it’s much trickier to achieve.

“Head’s up!”

Nora landed smoothly, flipping the trigger on her hammer a few moments before her boots hit the crumbling stone. She caught her weight on her hands and continued the count, as Ren dropped down next to her. A few long heartbeats later, the crystal blew out and they matched stares as the aftershock washed down. 

She gritted her teeth at the extra flickers of chill memory that danced under her thoughts, in reply to the shock of it, and she focused on Ren’s reassuringly steady face. Then the pressure released again, back to the almost familiar background horribleness, and she relaxed a bit. Ren nudged her shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

“Always,” Nora nodded, a little more shakily than she would normally have done, and grinned. “Thanks, Renny.”

He held out a hand and she grasped it gratefully. They pulled each other back upright, and Nora glanced up at the stark shape of their now-empty second pillar. To give Weiss the credit, nothing like glyphs for a little boost when push came to shove. Even when the sickening corrupted feeling of this place was playing havoc with their Semblances and Aura.

Another  _ crack _ of discharging Dust broke across the plain as she turned back, to where the third figure of their squad had set up a position behind a chunk of jutting rock. She was knelt down behind it, sword stabbed deep into the cracking stone with a snow white summoning glyph spinning around her.

Little wisps of plasma rose from the giant ethereal form of the knight, and there were smears of half evaporated darkness fading away from it’s sword. Weiss wasn’t even looking up at it though, her gaze fixed firmly on the battle raging above them. And the Grimm were getting  _ very _ close.

The too-angular houndlike form of a Beowulf howled into existence a few feet away from Weiss’s distracted form. Growling furiously, its pitch black fur bristling as it lunged-

And it was hit in the face almost immediately by a bright pink shape. The creature and grenade broke apart in a scream, a shower of blackened steam a few bits of falling bone. Nora gave a whoop of triumph, punching the air, as her other arm sun Magnhild back into a hammer.

“Oh yeah, take  _ that!” _ She caught Ren’s gaze again, and grinned a little sheepishly. “Taking the wins we can get today.”

“I can tell,” Ren said, smiling about as calmly as could be expected. Weiss drew her rapier from the stone and the knight dissipated, even as the heiress loaded her last round of Dust bullets into the hilt.

Nora started to reply, desperate to have some of that familiar reparte in this terrible situation, but her words died on her tongue as the roar came again. She swivelled, looping up towards the distant gleam of blazing eyes that were suddenly visible against the permanently red dusk of the sky.

Icy horror poured down her neck. They weren't  _ finished _ yet?! She’d been keeping track of the other explosions, and they were only halfway done.

“Oh no,” she murmured and glanced around quickly, scanning the rest of the plain for the other towers. For their other friends. Yang and Blake, Jaune and Oscar, and Ren, Weiss, and herself. 

Ruby was understandably occupied.

Ren and her assigned pillars had been fairly close together. Between the combination of Weiss’s summons, her own grenades, and the occasional lime bright shot from Ren’s pistols, they’d managed to keep the massing Grimm at bay rather effectively.

It helped that the monsters seemed to be confused by the multiple sources of detonation. They flocked this way and that as different towers went off. This, she knew, had been the plan. Cause so many sources of danger for the Grimm that they didn’t know where to go. At least it was going well so far.

There was certainly less appearing just behind them going on than they’d managed before. And she could swear she had seen at least one overshoot in its charge and vanish struggling into the tar pits whence it came.

Which meant that their most defensible place was backed up against the primordial ooze itself. Which was just great, naturally, but it was technically better than nothing when they were dashing between pillars.

But the next nearest pillar was back towards where the dragon was coming in from.

“Of course it is,” Nora muttered to herself, then stopped. Weiss gave a snarl behind her and spun the chamber of her rapier, unleashing another round of fire. But that wasn’t what was suddenly hammering for focus at the edge of Nora’s attention.

She squinted in through the haze of the air here. Something  _ else _ was happening, just in front of the returning behemoth.

The scene resolved, with a suddenness of realisation that wrenched down through her in horrible succession as her insides lurched violently. She couldn’t see the grapple wire, too thin at this distance, but there was definitely a distant figure hanging partway between the next pillar and its canyon edges.

And  _ nothing else  _ here was white. Not that pearly white that she’d recognize even with her eyes closed. Dread bloomed, even ahead of the sickening surges of old darkness prompted by the ongoing roar, and Nora’s breath came up short.

_ “Jaune!” _

She was running before she even realised she had started to move. Followed first by the surprised cry of her partner and from their friend, then the thuds of footfall as they came after her. She heard Weiss swear, heard the  _ crack  _ of gunfire going off somewhere behind her, and the squawking otherworldly screech of a Nevermore.

But they were running right on the edge of the central area now, and she could  _ feel _ the wrongness to the air here, even beyond everything else wrong of this place.

The ground shuddered underfoot more than it should, and a few times she had to jump over narrow chasms that plunged into bubbling nothingness. Or worse, in some cases, when there was a glimmer of Grimm-eyed brightness beneath, right at the bottom edge of her vision.

But she wasn’t going to look down, wasn’t going to look away from that distant point of incorrectly pure white. So when the dragon burst out of the horizon, all wings and smoke and the horrible violet brilliance of a gaze like an alternate spectrum hell, she was looking  _ right at it _ .

The too thin breath congealed in her throat, clamping her chest down on itself and she stumbled as she saw the creature sweep forward. Saw a beam of twisting light spear into it as it passed over the pillar. Saw the huge tail slice where Jaune’s line must be without even a pause. And she couldn’t even manage a cry as the suspended figure began to fall.

_ No _ . No, not here. Not like  _ this- _

And he stopped. He swung to slam hard into the side of the pillar, but he  _ stopped _ . Hands grabbed Nora’s shoulders, pulled her back. She barely had time to realise how close the edge of one of the smaller chasms she had been, as Ren’s voice blurred around her and her own heartbeat hammered deafeningly in her ears.

The grapple was still attached. At one end. It was still attached.

Gods preserve her.

She straightened up, gripping Ren’s arm tightly in reply or reassurance, she wasn’t sure which, and they started running again. Towards where Weiss had veered away from their initial direction, skirting the edge of that pillar’s splintered canyon. She had headed for where Oscar’s distinct figure was now surrounded by a closing knot of Grimm.

Reactionary brilliant shooting stars from Weiss’s rapier tore holes the staff hadn’t managed to reach yet. And by the time the pair of them caught up, the rest of the attackers had been dispatched.

Oscar nodded to them grimly. The boy was pale under his freckles, bleeding in a few places as his Aura struggled to battle the oil slick magic of this place. 

“Going about as well as ever,” he said, but there was strain under his voice. “Any one of you got a way to get him down?”

“I’ll fly up,” Weiss replied firmly, twirling her rapier, preparing to cast the glyphs necessary to complete the feat. Nora didn’t miss the way the heiress’s hands were shaking though, as she glanced up at where Jaune was pulling himself awkwardly back up onto the pillar top. “I can do this, just need a minute to concentrate. I think I know-”

“Look,” Ren cut in. “Your Aura is drained, and there is no guarantee that the connection will even last long enough to-”

His interruption failed as the crystal flared again, hurling a second brilliant ray out to where the dragon had spiralled upwards over the middle of the maelstrom sky. It was snapping and twisting at the red figure that was slicing desperately at it. 

Closer to it not, Nora could  _ hear _ the beam. It made a tearing glass screech that set her teeth on edge, and she winced as she ineffectively tried to shield her ears, and squinted up at the crystal.

She wasn’t sure exactly what the beams did. Heal the monster that used to be Salem or something, Jaune had suggested. But getting rid of them was a good idea even just to stop that noise.

Jaune was standing up now, backlit against the shivering light, and… What the  _ hell _ was he…?

“Nora,” Osacr’s voice was tight as he followed her stare, to where the distant figure had adopted a braced stance, reaching towards the sword still strapped to his side after everything. “Nora, oh this is bad-!”


	3. The Landing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes when you fall, you need somebody’s help to get back on your feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of whatever this was. I enjoyed writing this, even if it was mostly just self indulgent and nonsense. We needed more interactions between these two, and I guess i have to do everything around here. Hope y'all enjoyed reading it!

_ “Jaune!”  _ Ren’s shout rolled out like a thunderclap and her partner half lunged forward. Oscar was beside him, waving his arms in a frantic approximation of semaphore, and wailing at the distant figure. Nora could hear the sudden cold desperation in both of their voices. “Don’t you freaking  _ dare! _ Don’t you even-”

There was only one way this was going. And she was not having it.

She was already running as the distant figure drew his blade. Her boots slammed into the stone and each footfall was a statement. Each thump a furious scream at what stupid excuse for fate was trying to pull a fast one right now.

Her hands curled tighter inside her gloves and around the handle of her trusty hammer, and she gritted her teeth. She couldn’t be sure, couldn’t be quite  _ certain _ of the faint prickle of something against her skin. It traced the faded patterns of magically scarred flesh along her palms and arms, from where she had that lightning bolt had struck her so long ago and awoken her Semblance.

It hadn’t been working so far, but now would be a  _ very _ good time for it to start.

There was fire above her, a deafening  _ crack _ of out flung crystal shards, and she looked up, then down, and up and down again, as her mind whirled with frantic aeronautic calculation. Jaune’s out flung figure arched backwards from the detonation, hurled out over the yawning gap.

Nora’s boots cleared the edge of the chasm in a headlong launch, and one parting explosive grenade for any extra bit of momentum..

She clicked the trigger of Magnhild and electricity arched up its handle, and there was a  _ definite  _ shiver at her clenched fingers now, and the raw insanity of it all howled in her ears. But she had been matching collisions trajectories enough times by now. From a dozen types of airship, shield launching, and variations on malfunctioning flight, and this time had at least started from somewhere stationary.

The weightless moment stretched out, momentum and gravity vying for dreadful favour. The forces snatched at the gossamer threads of Aura and lift that danced across her, drawn out from her Semblance by sheer determination, if nothing else. The world seemed to be holding its breath. Filled with all the shades of what could go so utterly and completely wrong.

Come on. Come  _ on _ .

Then she hit the plunging knight square in his stomach, wrapping her outflung arms as tightly as she dared around the other plummeting shape, and the impact jolted a hard-shock through her. Tendrils of too bright memory jolted right along with her, taking her back to Jaune doing this for her all the way back in Argus. She felt her Semblance shiver, Aura given strength failing under the sudden increase in weight.

But the accelerated deflection had been enough, and a moment later there was another rib slamming joly as they crashed into the tiled top of one of the broken slabs jutting from the opposite canyon wall.

Nora clung down hard, wedging her ringing head against Jaune in a vague attempt to hold on with her neck as well. And she had another horrible moment of sliding scrapping weightlessness.

But then her rock torn fingertips scoured the wall to a standstill, splintering dusty fragments trailing around her grasp, and she rammed the tips of her boots into the rock below.

“Oh good  _ lords _ ,” she gasped. The razor thin air scraped her throat and for a good few moments she concentrated just on breathing, half deaf from her own heart beat, and stared dumbly at the stone an inch from her nose. She could feel the faint rise and fall of Jaune’s chest beneath her, feel small twitches in his cheek next to hers.

Finally she managed to pull herself together enough to lean back slightly, raising up so that she could look at him, and not run the risk of dislodging either of them from their precarious shelf.

He was staring. Not at her, even with her filling up what had to be his entire field of vision. Jaune stared  _ through _ her somehow, his sapphire gaze stretched wide. She shifted slightly and tried to find her voice.

“That was  _ really _ dumb,” she said quietly, and she wasn’t entirely sure which one of them she meant. Jaune shivered. His fingers twitched, scratching down against the rock as he blinked a few times, and then the stare settled back onto her a little more securely. 

He looked battered. His armor was laced with hairline cracks in a few places, gold inlay dulled and fracturing. Wild blonde hair was singed at the tips, and his exposed skin was peppered with small cuts. Crocea Mors was clutched in a death grip, and she didn’t think he was even aware that he still had it. But he was  _ alive _ .

Another blink, and his lips moved like a question, although no sound came out. Nora shrugged. She should say something. Anything. That was what she was best at.

“Well, I could have managed not to catch you with my freaking  _ face _ ,” she muttered. Jaune kept staring at her, looking dazed. Nora adjusted her grip again, and tried to put a bit more reassurance into her tones.

“I’m right here, no worries fearless leader. Freaking hope that Weiss gets a move on with her summon, but we’re okay. Kind of.” She craned up, trying to see anything useful past the edge of the crevasse, but all she could make out was the murky red of the sky. 

The noxious sludge bubbled helpfully barely a few feet below them. Nora thanked any gods that might be listening that they were remaining stationary. Even if stationary wasn’t getting them any closer to help. Jaune opened his mouth again, hesitated, and finally managed to speak.

“I was… falling  _ again _ . I thought it… I was..” his voice caught, halting in his throat and he half turned away, expressions chasing each other across his features too fast to be clear. Nora bit her lip, hoping like hell she hadn’t hit him harder in the head than she had thought. 

But he seemed focused enough now, just shocked. No, not exactly  _ shocked, _ that didn’t quite go far enough…

A memory stirred, rising past the grim slick of recent horrors, and Jaune’s earlier words echoed back across her mind. When after far too long, after months or years of carrying it with him, they’d finally gotten him to tell them about what had happened at the Fall.

_ “I remember falling, and light. And then everything I never knew I cared about was gone.” _

“I’m right here,” she repeated, more firmly this time, and now all the  _ other _ meanings welled up either side of those words and Jaune’s fingers curled a little tighter against her arm. She held his gaze, blue on blue, and this time he didn’t look away.

“If you fall again,” she said quietly, into the strange little private moment that seemed to have formed. “We’ll catch you. Ren, me, Ruby, all of us. And if that’s not enough, and if we do lose someone, and you lose yourself. Then we’ll just find you and show you who you are, all over again, just like before. A hundred million bajillion times..”

There was precious little room on the ledge as it was, but Nora shifted as much as she was able to make space as Jaune’s chest shook with tears and a faint glimmer of reassurance sparked in his eyes. He drew her into a bone crushing hug, and she managed a small smile as he shook. The knight drew her somehow tighter to him, as if he was making sure she was there, that he could trust his vision.

“I promise,” she murmured, and was just trying to find a light hearted continuation of the sentence when soft sobs reached her ears. She froze, and then leaned into it as well as she could while staying awkwardly braced against the crumbling stone. 

Jaune was battered and shivering with close-brush mortality, but there was  _ understanding _ in the moment. He had finally allowed himself to cry. It wasn’t new, not entirely, but now that it had been stated, her promise seemed to brand itself into the air around them.

We’ve got you. All of you, right now. We’ve got you, and you’ve got us. And you’re not getting rid of us that easily. We’ve got your back, everything that you are. And if you need us to, we’ll find you.

Even if you’ve lost yourself.

“You okay?” she asked as they finally separated. There was a faux casual tone to her voice, and Nora nearly winced at how plastered on it sounded. Jaune looked down and blinked, still dazed, as a frown traced onto his features.

“...no,” he admitted. Jaune looked at her, almost confused for a moment. He glanced past her to where she could hear the faint crystalline sounds of Weiss’s summons, and then he let out a long shuddering breath. “I’m not okay. But… I could be. I think.”

He glanced back at Nora as he spoke and, like a curtain lifting, the  _ focus _ was suddenly back in his face. Not perfect, not even very well pulled together just now, but that old hardlight edge was there again. Jaune looked more like…  _ Jaune _ , and less like he was about to pull another stupidly heroic stunt at the cost of himself.

Nora’s grin was a beacon. “I think we can work with that,” she said brightly. Jaune managed a wobbly smile as he met her gaze. Yeah. They could  _ definitely _ work with that. If they made it out of this alive, and in even close to one piece. 

Her Aura had shattered completely on impact with his armor, and even Jaune’s plentiful supply of the stuff was struggling against the malevolent forces in the to heal even the smallest wounds that he had.

And all of that was ignoring whether Ren would kill her first for this latest stunt.

But Jaune was looking more solid than she’d seen him be in months, maybe years. He was holding himself together with scotch tape and luck, but she could work with that.

Duct tape and lots of pancakes hadn’t failed her yet.


End file.
